1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,720 So death to Arabs now became law. 2 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,680 Death to Arabs was a chant by, you know, some factions and 3 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:10,200 stadiums and you know, Bing veers. 4 00:00:10,200 --> 00:00:13,440 The Bing veers would say death to Arabs and then they would ask 5 00:00:13,600 --> 00:00:15,600 and they would say approached and they would say well, death 6 00:00:15,600 --> 00:00:17,880 to terrorists. So this conflation between Arabs 7 00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:19,560 and terrorists has existed for some time. 8 00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:23,360 This is also relates to what Walid Dhaka, Dhali Dhaka that 9 00:00:23,360 --> 00:00:27,840 you mentioned conceptualized as the small prison and the bigger 10 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:30,200 prison. So the torturous environment can 11 00:00:30,200 --> 00:00:33,920 manifest in different ways and in a way you can talk about the 12 00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:38,760 whole of the West Bank and Gaza as a torturous environment, as 13 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:42,640 different techniques that Israel has inflicted on the population 14 00:00:42,640 --> 00:00:47,840 to make their lives held and therefore deprive them from the 15 00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:50,800 right to movement, which is akin to incarceration. 16 00:00:51,160 --> 00:00:54,720 But much of the British legislation remained and also 17 00:00:54,720 --> 00:01:00,880 became became a blue a blueprint for the completing the 18 00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:03,600 colonization of Palestine. The fact of the matter is that 19 00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:05,840 the British have controlled different territories, 20 00:01:05,840 --> 00:01:10,600 including, you know, India and, you know, Oman and other and the 21 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:13,800 Gulf more generally and Jordan and Iraq, etcetera. 22 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:18,640 So much of the knowledge that was produced in these areas was 23 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:21,800 also transparent, but the most significant of which is 24 00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:25,040 obviously Ireland. So, you know, the black and tans 25 00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:27,960 is something that both the Irish and the Palestinians 26 00:01:27,960 --> 00:01:29,920 experienced. Israeli prisons were also kind 27 00:01:29,920 --> 00:01:34,400 of just inherited by by the Israelis from the British. 28 00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:44,600 Welcome to our second episode of Fronts and Fault Lines. 29 00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:50,240 Palestinian Prisoners Day falls on April 17th, the date in 1974 30 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:53,680 when Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails launched a hunger 31 00:01:53,680 --> 00:01:56,880 strike demanding recognition of their political status. 32 00:01:57,320 --> 00:01:59,720 It is a day that belongs for tradition of collective 33 00:01:59,720 --> 00:02:03,560 resistance stretching across decades and across generations. 34 00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,919 As of April 2026 / 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli 35 00:02:08,919 --> 00:02:14,640 prisons, including 342 children, with over 3500 detained under 36 00:02:14,640 --> 00:02:17,800 so-called administrative detention, meaning without 37 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:21,240 charge, without trial and without a defined endpoint. 38 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:25,160 Since October 2023, the International Committee of the 39 00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:28,720 Red Cross has been denied access to visit Palestinian detainees, 40 00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:32,400 leaving prisoners without the documentation and legal support 41 00:02:32,640 --> 00:02:35,320 that international oversight is meant to guarantee. 42 00:02:36,480 --> 00:02:40,560 On March 30th of this year, just weeks before Prisoners Day, the 43 00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:43,800 Israeli Knesset passed a bill that instructs military courts 44 00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:47,160 to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of 45 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:50,440 killing Israelis in acts of terror, but will not impose the 46 00:02:50,440 --> 00:02:53,240 same penalty on Israelis convicted of killing 47 00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:55,960 Palestinians. The law mandates death by 48 00:02:55,960 --> 00:02:59,280 hanging and requires that sentences be carried out within 49 00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:02,920 90 days of a final ruling. It restricts access to legal 50 00:03:02,920 --> 00:03:07,200 counsel and family visits, limits external oversight and 51 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:10,120 grants immunity to those involved in carrying out 52 00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:13,160 executions. Israel's military court system 53 00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:17,560 operates with an approximately 96% conviction rate, based 54 00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:21,200 largely on confessions extracted under duress and torture during 55 00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:24,800 interrogations. The day the law passed, Israeli 56 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:28,120 politicians wore hangman's nooses on their labels on the 57 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:31,520 Knesset floor. It's a Marvin Veer's wife even 58 00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:35,200 celebrated his birthday recently with a noose decorated cake. 59 00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:38,400 Today we are joined by Doctor Nimous Sultani. 60 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:41,800 Dr. Sultani is a leading scholar of constitutional and 61 00:03:41,800 --> 00:03:45,480 comparative law who has written extensively on Israeli law's 62 00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:49,640 legitimating function, the legal architecture of occupation, and 63 00:03:49,640 --> 00:03:52,080 the relationship between law and colonial power. 64 00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:55,400 We're recording this in the wake of Prisoners Day and in the 65 00:03:55,400 --> 00:03:59,280 shadow of the execution bill. Doctor Nemid, welcome to Front 66 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:01,000 and Fault Lines. We're really grateful to have 67 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:04,720 you with us today. Thank you Nihad and Janine for 68 00:04:04,720 --> 00:04:06,120 having me. Thanks, William. 69 00:04:07,320 --> 00:04:10,400 So the first question we want to ask really is grounded in the 70 00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:13,960 location we're recording this podcast from, which is Britain. 71 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:18,200 And the fact that your work engages deeply with how Israeli 72 00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:22,040 law didn't just emerge from scratch in in 1948 with the 73 00:04:22,040 --> 00:04:26,200 establishment of of the colonial state, but was built on Mandate 74 00:04:26,200 --> 00:04:28,920 era foundation. So foundations they inherited 75 00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:33,800 from the British mandate period. The emergency regulations of 76 00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:37,440 1945, which the British themselves actually revoked 77 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:42,680 before leaving, were immediately readopted by by Israel. 78 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:47,800 Can you walk us through that inheritance of, of British 79 00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:51,480 Mandate law, what legal tools the British developed in 80 00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:56,160 Palestine and how they drew on colonial practices from places 81 00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:00,200 like Ireland and from India and South Africa in the development 82 00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:03,760 of these laws? And what does it tell us about 83 00:05:03,760 --> 00:05:08,160 Israeli law that it was built on these kind of illegitimate 84 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:11,200 foundations? The British inheritance is 85 00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:14,240 indeed a fundamental shaping the course of the evolution of 86 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:17,440 Israeli legal system and the constitutional framework that 87 00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:21,040 has been developed since 1948. First and foremost is the 88 00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:25,120 constitutional structure. So the 1917 Balfour Declaration 89 00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:29,520 was integrated into the Mandate of Palestine and eventually 90 00:05:29,520 --> 00:05:32,880 became the structure for the denial of self determination in 91 00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:36,000 Palestine. And the main constitutional 92 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:41,560 document is the 1922 Palestine Constitution or the Persian 93 00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:44,680 Constitution which is which comes in the form of ordering 94 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:47,720 council. Meaning as one of the Persian 95 00:05:47,720 --> 00:05:52,760 commentators and leaders of the time in 1933 said it was 96 00:05:52,960 --> 00:05:57,440 produced, canned and shipped from London without any popular 97 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:00,280 involvement, without any democratic consultation. 98 00:06:00,440 --> 00:06:05,240 So it was a top down anti democratic document which laid 99 00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:10,280 down to the subordination of the majority of the population to 100 00:06:10,280 --> 00:06:14,920 the imperial and the colonial designs of replacing one people 101 00:06:14,920 --> 00:06:19,520 with another. And, and that developed into an 102 00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:22,800 undemocratic framework in the sense that there was a lot of 103 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:24,960 debate in the during the mandate about something called the 104 00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:27,960 Legislative Council. And that was aborted because 105 00:06:27,960 --> 00:06:30,600 they would not agree to proportional representation. 106 00:06:30,760 --> 00:06:35,240 They would not agree to one person, you know, one vote 107 00:06:35,840 --> 00:06:38,040 framework, because the Palestinians were the majority 108 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:41,880 and they wanted to deny the impact and the voice of the 109 00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:45,440 majority and to subordinate to the minority interests of the 110 00:06:46,040 --> 00:06:48,840 Zions. So that also makes the Pasilian 111 00:06:48,840 --> 00:06:52,680 case similar to the revolutionary slogan in the US 112 00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:56,400 context or the American context, which is no, no representation 113 00:06:56,400 --> 00:07:02,240 without no, no, no taxation without representation. 114 00:07:02,760 --> 00:07:05,080 Because the Pasilians were demanding, demanding 115 00:07:05,200 --> 00:07:09,600 representation, were demanding that they rule themselves. 116 00:07:09,960 --> 00:07:12,720 And the mandate system was supposed to be in any other 117 00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:18,880 mandatory area as one in which the developed nations tutor the 118 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:22,840 undeveloped, underdeveloped nations into self governance. 119 00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:27,680 But the British, including people like Lord Balfour, 120 00:07:27,960 --> 00:07:30,840 declared publicly again and again that they are 121 00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:34,320 exceptionalizing Palestine. So it's worst case than the 122 00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:37,080 mandate in Iraq or the mandate in Egypt or the mandate in 123 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:39,360 Syria. And the sense in this case, the 124 00:07:39,360 --> 00:07:44,080 intention was not to allow the Palestinian majority to get self 125 00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:49,760 governance and statehood by the end of the mandate. 126 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:53,680 And why? Because they were dismissive of 127 00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:58,560 the interest, desires and rights of the natives and they wanted 128 00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:01,720 to replace them with the majority of relation. 129 00:08:02,040 --> 00:08:05,280 And both were said very clearly that the great powers of the 130 00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:09,960 time, you know, dominating the recognitions, we are committed 131 00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:13,320 to Zionism. So this is the first element 132 00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:17,400 which is the laying the foundation for the denial of 133 00:08:17,400 --> 00:08:20,560 self determination, for the denial of the natives to govern 134 00:08:20,560 --> 00:08:22,360 themselves in a constitutional structure. 135 00:08:22,880 --> 00:08:26,360 Now that is mimicked and also replaced by the constitutional 136 00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:32,559 structure that created after 1948, which was not codified and 137 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:35,120 was increasingly written by the 1990s. 138 00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:40,600 But the basic foundation of which was the denial of the 139 00:08:41,480 --> 00:08:44,680 natives or the majority of the the the Palestinians and the 140 00:08:44,680 --> 00:08:47,920 natives of the and they in to govern themselves in their own 141 00:08:48,160 --> 00:08:52,240 homeland. The second element of that 142 00:08:52,240 --> 00:08:57,120 constitutional legal framework is the wide-ranging and 143 00:08:57,160 --> 00:09:02,760 basically unrestricted powers of the commissioner or the 144 00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:06,480 basically the commander by the British in the area. 145 00:09:07,040 --> 00:09:10,920 And the Palestinians of the time complained that the if you 146 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:15,400 compare the High commissioner's powers in Iraq or other 147 00:09:15,400 --> 00:09:19,880 mandatory areas to the powers they have in Palestine were 148 00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:22,760 somewhat incomparable because they were much more expensive 149 00:09:22,760 --> 00:09:29,280 and more unrestricted in the case of the the, the rulers of 150 00:09:29,600 --> 00:09:34,600 the British rulers of Palestine. And that leads to collapse any 151 00:09:34,600 --> 00:09:37,520 sense of rule of law, because here you don't have suppression 152 00:09:37,520 --> 00:09:40,720 of powers. You have the commander is at the 153 00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:44,160 same time the executive and the legislator. 154 00:09:44,560 --> 00:09:48,520 And there was no sense in which the the British courts were 155 00:09:48,520 --> 00:09:51,080 actually independent. In fact, there was an an 156 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:55,560 important episode in the 1930s where a Scottish head of the 157 00:09:55,560 --> 00:10:04,000 judiciary was dismissed because of an attempt to show some kind 158 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:06,960 of the ills of the British actions, including the 159 00:10:06,960 --> 00:10:09,760 destruction of whole neighborhoods in JAFA at the 160 00:10:09,760 --> 00:10:15,440 time in 1930s. And that criticism in the 161 00:10:15,440 --> 00:10:19,280 additional document became part of the Palestinian discourse and 162 00:10:19,280 --> 00:10:22,760 attempt to affirm their own grievances and complaints 163 00:10:22,760 --> 00:10:26,760 against the British military and the British policy. 164 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:31,080 So that Chief Justice was immediately sacked and sent back 165 00:10:31,080 --> 00:10:35,480 to Britain and that created, you know, raised the ability to have 166 00:10:35,480 --> 00:10:40,960 some form of pushback from the legal system and the courts. 167 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:45,520 And, and, and again, if you look now at the military commanders 168 00:10:45,520 --> 00:10:49,200 after 1948, so you have the military commanders between 1948 169 00:10:49,200 --> 00:10:54,440 and 19661966 ruling the Palestinians who remained in 170 00:10:54,440 --> 00:10:56,320 Israel and eventually granted cenship. 171 00:10:56,680 --> 00:11:00,600 So, so that's the Palestinian minority inside Israel around 172 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:06,200 156,000 at a time today around 2, one half million. 173 00:11:07,480 --> 00:11:12,400 And again, the powers were quite unrestrained. 174 00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:15,560 And then then there is the third element which you refer to, 175 00:11:15,560 --> 00:11:19,960 which is the one that controls individual rights, including the 176 00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:23,040 right to whom and so and the right and property rights and 177 00:11:23,040 --> 00:11:25,240 free speech. So that's the emergency 178 00:11:25,240 --> 00:11:26,960 regulations, the defence regulations. 179 00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:31,040 In any revolution situation or a rupture situation, including the 180 00:11:31,040 --> 00:11:35,320 rupture of the Israelis and the Zionists replacing the British, 181 00:11:36,880 --> 00:11:39,520 there is no vacuum, legal vacuum. 182 00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:41,840 So what happens in most revolution situations or rupture 183 00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:45,880 situations is that the majority of the pre-existing legal system 184 00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:49,640 gets absorbed into the new legal system with certain 185 00:11:49,640 --> 00:11:51,520 modifications. So that's what the Israelis did. 186 00:11:51,880 --> 00:11:55,160 Because you, you can't start, you know, legislate immediately 187 00:11:55,280 --> 00:11:58,480 from moment 0. So much of the British 188 00:11:58,480 --> 00:12:03,560 legislation remained and also became became a a blueprint for 189 00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:08,120 the completing the colonization of Palestine. 190 00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:13,560 So importantly, between 1948 and 1960, there was a string of 191 00:12:13,560 --> 00:12:19,800 laws, around 12 legislation in the Knesset and regulations that 192 00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:23,840 consolidated the theft of Palestinian land. 193 00:12:24,280 --> 00:12:28,840 So much of it was, you know, done legally legal form. 194 00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:34,400 Some of it was done extra legally, but was retroactively 195 00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:41,480 legalized in order to make it look as law legal or formally 196 00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:46,240 legitimate. So that law became the main 197 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:50,800 vehicle for transformation, the transforming title of land. 198 00:12:51,120 --> 00:12:54,280 You have these huge numbers of Palestinians, almost 1,000,000 199 00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:58,600 leaving in the span of a year or so their territory. 200 00:12:58,840 --> 00:13:01,400 And this means that there's a lot of property, there's a lot 201 00:13:01,400 --> 00:13:05,360 of land that remained. And then how do you absorb that 202 00:13:05,640 --> 00:13:09,280 into the new legal structure? So the main function of that 203 00:13:09,280 --> 00:13:11,800 legislation was to do exactly that. 204 00:13:12,560 --> 00:13:16,840 And then by 1990, two, 1994, on the so-called basic Laws, which 205 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:22,560 is legislation now, the right to property became a constitutional 206 00:13:22,560 --> 00:13:25,720 right. Now, why did it wait till 1990s 207 00:13:25,720 --> 00:13:29,040 to declare the property rights as council rights highly 208 00:13:29,040 --> 00:13:31,960 protected? It's because by that time they 209 00:13:32,200 --> 00:13:35,520 basically finished the legalization and the 210 00:13:35,520 --> 00:13:39,160 confiscation of the majority of Palestinian lands, including 211 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:43,400 many of the property that were owned as private property by the 212 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:45,240 Palestinians who remained and became citizens. 213 00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:48,480 So their confiscation remain in different ways throughout. 214 00:13:49,480 --> 00:13:53,760 And then another element of these defence regulations, 215 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:59,080 regulations also the control of the Palestinians who remained in 216 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:03,000 the side, the territory that became Israel. 217 00:14:03,440 --> 00:14:05,520 So the control of their right to movement. 218 00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:09,840 You need a permit in order to leave your, you know, village 219 00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:12,760 and go to the Jewish city without to sell merchandise or 220 00:14:12,760 --> 00:14:14,880 to work. And that means that you are 221 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:19,240 completely subject to the whims of the military commander. 222 00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:22,320 And that created a system of nepotism and, you know, and, and 223 00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:26,840 reward and punishment in order to control the population. 224 00:14:27,160 --> 00:14:29,960 But there's also then the question of consciousness. 225 00:14:29,960 --> 00:14:31,840 How do you shape the consciousness of the population? 226 00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:36,560 How do you educate them in a moment in which they are 227 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:40,680 basically a minority when they were the majority and now are 228 00:14:40,680 --> 00:14:46,280 aliens in their own homeland governed by these newly arriving 229 00:14:46,840 --> 00:14:51,840 settlers? And the other element of this is 230 00:14:51,840 --> 00:14:57,720 that once we moved to the 1967 and its aftermath, the very 231 00:14:57,720 --> 00:15:00,680 structure of the military commander and expansive powers 232 00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:04,160 and military legislation that we have seen during the mandate. 233 00:15:04,440 --> 00:15:07,640 And then we have seen in in the military government against the 234 00:15:07,640 --> 00:15:14,320 Bustinians inside Israel till 1966 is wholesale transferred to 235 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:18,360 the West Bank and Gaza. Same almost the same persons, 236 00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:20,040 the same kind of regulations in place. 237 00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:24,160 They they were well prepared prior to 1967 because they 238 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:30,800 anticipated the that they will control large areas with large 239 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:33,960 civilian populations, Arab and and Palestinian. 240 00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:37,720 So there are different ways in which that British inheritance 241 00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:41,160 continues to inform the system today. 242 00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:45,880 The denial of basic rights, including the right of movement, 243 00:15:46,240 --> 00:15:51,120 the control of the media, the and the restrictions on on free 244 00:15:51,120 --> 00:15:56,720 speech, the suppression of a national identity and 245 00:15:56,720 --> 00:15:59,480 expressions of national identity and the cultivation of national 246 00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:03,400 identity. And any attempt to create a 247 00:16:03,400 --> 00:16:07,680 national movement through the right association and through 248 00:16:07,680 --> 00:16:11,600 the right of assembly and through the right to movement 249 00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:14,520 and undermining access to education. 250 00:16:14,800 --> 00:16:19,920 So all of these come from the British inheritance and 251 00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:26,120 obviously where in many ways complemented by Israeli 252 00:16:26,120 --> 00:16:28,360 legislation. There's also a broader, you 253 00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:32,000 know, question that you refer to, which is how does this 254 00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:35,880 colonial knowledge move around between different territories 255 00:16:35,880 --> 00:16:40,800 and different. And the fact of the matter is 256 00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:43,360 that the British have controlled different territories, 257 00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:48,120 including, you know, India and you know, Oman and other and the 258 00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:51,320 Gulf more generally and Jordan and Iraq etcetera. 259 00:16:51,640 --> 00:16:56,160 So much of the knowledge that was produced in these areas was 260 00:16:56,160 --> 00:16:59,320 also transparent, but the most significant of which is 261 00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:02,560 obviously Ireland. So you know, the black and tans 262 00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:06,200 is something that both the Irish and the Palestinians experienced 263 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:08,760 in 1930. The the suppression of the 264 00:17:08,760 --> 00:17:13,720 19361939 revolt in particular, if you you know, go to the 265 00:17:13,720 --> 00:17:16,839 details of the history have had that done many of these 266 00:17:16,839 --> 00:17:19,160 so-called experts and counterinsurgency and 267 00:17:19,160 --> 00:17:22,480 pacification. We're, you know, we're brought 268 00:17:22,640 --> 00:17:28,200 from different zones of colonial governance in order to to deal 269 00:17:28,200 --> 00:17:32,120 with the unruly population. Cause at the same time that the 270 00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:35,800 Palestinians were revolting in 1936, other revolts were 271 00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:38,640 happening in India and other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 272 00:17:39,240 --> 00:17:43,720 So that you, if you go also, you know, forward in history. 273 00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:48,480 So if you look at how the British helped the Omani Sultan 274 00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:52,640 to suppress the far revolution, which is, you know, the latest, 275 00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:56,040 you know, and the longest left wing revolutionary movement in 276 00:17:56,040 --> 00:18:00,080 1960s till the 1970s. And you look at some of their, 277 00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:04,000 you know, particular and concrete practices such as 278 00:18:04,360 --> 00:18:11,640 leaflets thrown, destruction of mosque and you know, warning 279 00:18:12,600 --> 00:18:15,920 shots, roof knocking, etcetera. You see that Israelis have done 280 00:18:15,920 --> 00:18:20,120 much of that playbook later on in Gaza repeatedly. 281 00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:25,200 So it is much to be said about, you know, all these kind of 282 00:18:26,240 --> 00:18:31,480 colonial knowledge that is often called as counter insurgency. 283 00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:36,440 But in fact it is a suppression of the right of national self 284 00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:42,120 determination, the suppression of the natives desire and 285 00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:47,920 striving for freedom. We also know, for example, that 286 00:18:47,920 --> 00:18:50,800 things like administrative, administrative detention were 287 00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:53,320 was introduced originally by the British. 288 00:18:53,320 --> 00:18:56,800 And even some of the prisons, I think that still exists, like, 289 00:18:56,800 --> 00:18:59,040 you know, even from an infrastructure perspective that 290 00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:02,520 still exists. Israeli prisons were also kind 291 00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:07,040 of just inherited by by the Israelis from the British. 292 00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:10,480 Also, as you were speaking, I was reminded of a story that I 293 00:19:10,480 --> 00:19:14,120 don't, I am not going to be able to remember the exact law that 294 00:19:14,120 --> 00:19:17,400 it was that my dad told me, which was my great grandfather 295 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:21,800 were from the Galilee and he used to go to Argentina a lot 296 00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:23,920 for work. And apparently it was quite 297 00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:28,120 common, I think before the neck birth for Palestinians to go, 298 00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:30,640 you know, back and forth to travel a lot. 299 00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:34,800 And some of the laws around land ownership and renewing contracts 300 00:19:34,800 --> 00:19:38,480 of land ownership actually were sent to them with a very short 301 00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:41,520 time period at times where they knew that people would be not in 302 00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:45,800 their homes and they're not able to renew their their, their, 303 00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:48,720 their contracts for land. So as you were speaking, I was 304 00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:51,280 just reminded of that personal. Story. 305 00:19:51,280 --> 00:19:53,720 Yeah, there's a lot of issues that can be uncovered, you know, 306 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:57,640 kind of uncovered here. So one important question that 307 00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:01,960 happened once you move from Ottoman citizenship right into 308 00:20:02,240 --> 00:20:04,240 British nationality. Yeah. 309 00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:08,200 What happens to the thousands of personians who left to work in 310 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:11,080 Latin America? Yeah, there are thousands of 311 00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:15,200 persons who lost their citizenship because the British 312 00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:21,160 and the Zionists created the structure for legislation about 313 00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:25,600 who is, you know, who can acquire censure in ways that 314 00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:29,000 excluded these people. So that's one act of basically 315 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:31,480 de nationalizing a lot of. Yeah. 316 00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:35,080 Palestinians in that period. Yeah. 317 00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:38,920 Yeah. So the Israeli legal system 318 00:20:38,960 --> 00:20:41,760 maintains an appearance of legitimacy, while the legal 319 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:44,600 foundations for many of its practices are contested or 320 00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:47,480 inherited from a from this prior colonial framework that we 321 00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:51,240 talked about. I want to talk about a bit about 322 00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:53,760 the role of the High Court of Justice. 323 00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:57,680 While the court presents itself as a check on power through 324 00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:01,920 judicial review, critics, including yourself, suggests 325 00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:05,880 that it actually serves as the primary architect of this kind 326 00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:07,800 of legal fiction that we talked about. 327 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:12,160 How does the High Court and the legal system provide a thin 328 00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:16,880 layer of liberal legitimacy to practices like administrative 329 00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:20,080 detention and military trial for civilians? 330 00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:23,560 And politically, what does it mean for the state to carry out 331 00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:25,520 repression under the guise of law? 332 00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,880 And I'm also thinking a bit about, you know, in, in the wake 333 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:34,080 of the Second World War and the the popularization of 334 00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:38,600 international law in the UN, like how did Israel use the fact 335 00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:43,160 that international law was still being shaped to create a kind of 336 00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:48,240 like new state of exception or normalcy for Israel under 337 00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:50,920 international law? Yeah. 338 00:21:50,920 --> 00:21:53,920 This is a question I think that is fundamental to understand 339 00:21:53,920 --> 00:22:00,040 specifically today. So one element of it is that at 340 00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:03,520 the moment in which the universal Division of Human 341 00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:08,960 rights in 1938 was written, we have this major process of the 342 00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:13,520 replacement, the territorial removal of natives from their 343 00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:17,440 own land and replacing them with an incoming settler society. 344 00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:19,560 Now what's interesting about this is this. 345 00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:23,280 So the major figures who were arguing at the same time for the 346 00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:28,600 establishment of this post World War 2 legal order, a part of 347 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:32,600 which this declaration of Universal investigation of human 348 00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:36,880 rights were at the time, many of them were at the time arguing 349 00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:39,520 for the removal of the Palestinians from their 350 00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:42,920 homeland. So they did not see, because 351 00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:44,720 they were, many of them were Zionists, did not see any 352 00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:47,640 contradiction between arguing for universal rights and the 353 00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:52,920 same time the denial of rights for wholesale populations and 354 00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:58,640 what we call today the global S, because they sub subordinated 355 00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:03,120 this so-called universal discourse to their own political 356 00:23:03,120 --> 00:23:06,280 and ideological project. And we see this throughout the 357 00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:07,800 history when it comes to Palestine. 358 00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:14,440 Now the with respect to the Israeli legal system, one story 359 00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:17,640 about Israeli constitutionalism is that the Israeli Supreme 360 00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:22,200 Court moves from a kind of formal rule of law, very weak 361 00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:27,160 status towards much more stronger and activistic activist 362 00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,360 status. So that's basically when the 363 00:23:30,360 --> 00:23:34,360 1990s and the 2000s, you have these two base major basic laws 364 00:23:34,360 --> 00:23:37,720 that become the Bill of Rights. And then there's a legal consul 365 00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:41,200 system moves to a greater qualification that it it had so 366 00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:44,120 far, which is another element of British influence. 367 00:23:44,120 --> 00:23:46,280 They don't have a qualified constitution, but they have 368 00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:49,080 different basic laws that were created over time. 369 00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:55,080 And and that's at this point the Supreme Court becomes an 370 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,960 activist court in the legal discourse, meaning that they can 371 00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,240 block legislation that is advanced by government. 372 00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:07,920 They have much more critical and scrutiny of Israeli policies. 373 00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:13,320 And in few landmark cases they did that also with the question 374 00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:18,040 of the Palestinian territories. So one of the most famous is the 375 00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:24,000 one that relates to torture. Now, again, the reading of that 376 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:29,040 ruling is much more positive than actually what the court 377 00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,120 did. But at least the court acquired 378 00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:36,840 this sense of being this pro human rights activist court. 379 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:42,000 And one of the main figures in that transformation is the Chief 380 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,200 Justice of the Supreme Court, who before that served as the 381 00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:48,000 attorney general of the government during the Camp David 382 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:50,600 negotiations. His name is Haron Barack. 383 00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:56,000 And then Fast forward and after the genocide in January 2024, 384 00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:01,680 Israel appoints Haron Barack to become their ad hoc judge in the 385 00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:05,800 ICJ case by South Africa against Israel with regards to the 386 00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:09,960 allegations of genocide. Ad hoc judge means that you have 387 00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,400 the 15 judges who are already in the court and then if one, none 388 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:16,640 of them is of the nationality of the states that are involved. 389 00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,960 So this means South Africa and Israel, these states can appoint 390 00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:23,560 a judge to sit on the court in addition to these judges who are 391 00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:25,560 the permanent judges in that moment. 392 00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:29,880 So is it appointed Aaron Barack? Now the question is why would 393 00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:31,920 they appoint Aaron Barack? And this relates to your 394 00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:34,640 question, question about legitimation. 395 00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:40,480 The fact of the matter is the more human rights sounding and 396 00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:45,120 the more activist image you have cultivated, the more effective 397 00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:49,280 your legitimating effect is. So if you had a court like, you 398 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,640 know, the military courts you mentioned they would, we 399 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,160 wouldn't have a legitimating effect. 400 00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,120 Why? Because everyone understand this 401 00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:58,640 is with a military hierarchy, conviction of freight rate is 402 00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:01,520 really high. There's not really much of a 403 00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:03,920 presumption of due process and defendants, right? 404 00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:07,360 But when it comes to supreme courts and concert courts, 405 00:26:07,360 --> 00:26:09,800 usually there's a lot of pomp and circumstance. 406 00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:14,520 There's a lot of mystique of the law and concern about procedures 407 00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,720 and legal terminology because they want to create that 408 00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,560 legitimating effect. And in the case of Israel, that 409 00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:25,400 legitimating effect was harmful. Because if these are the judges, 410 00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,520 you know, from a Palestinian perspective, whether a 411 00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,400 Palestinian citizens in Israel or the West Bank and Gaza, these 412 00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,880 are the best judges you can get within the Israel legal system 413 00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:38,520 because they are supposedly liberal minded, they are human 414 00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:42,440 rights minded, etcetera. They talk the the universal 415 00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,760 language, they talk about basic rights and so on and so forth. 416 00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:50,120 And yet they produce these results, which is during this 417 00:26:50,120 --> 00:26:53,840 so-called rise of judicial review, the rise of the activist 418 00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,800 stage of Supreme Court. We saw the consolidation of 419 00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,200 apartheid. We saw increasing brutality of 420 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,920 the occupation. We saw unleashing lethal 421 00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:06,520 military force that we haven't seen before. 422 00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:10,560 We have seen more and more settlements and settlers and 423 00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:12,920 more and more checkpoints and more and more prisoners. 424 00:27:13,360 --> 00:27:16,600 So at the same time that the Supreme Court was gaining A 425 00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:21,560 reputation both in domestically and internationally as this 426 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,680 activist human rights court that is willing to be counter 427 00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:33,040 majoritarian, meaning to swim against the tide and to confront 428 00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:37,000 governmental decisions, including vis A vis people like 429 00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:45,440 Benjamin Netanyahu. So that image coincided and 430 00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:50,080 coexisted with that increasing colonization, apartheid and an 431 00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:56,080 occupation, which implies this legitimating effect. 432 00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:00,360 Because when you have a court with that kind of image, this 433 00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:04,480 means to domestic citizens that well, if her own Barack can live 434 00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:08,120 with occupation, I can live with it if the occupation is under 435 00:28:08,120 --> 00:28:10,720 the rule of law. Given these, you know, thousands 436 00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:12,840 and thousands of petitions that the Palestinians and the human 437 00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,760 rights organizations that represent representing keep, you 438 00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:20,480 know, sending to the court, this shows that there is some kind of 439 00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:22,160 process. There are grievances and there 440 00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:24,560 are some potential remedies in the situation. 441 00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,320 And occasionally these remedies are given even if in a 442 00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:33,120 compromised form. So that industry of litigation 443 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:38,280 and adjudication in the Supreme Court and the respect that this 444 00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,640 court and a few judges like Arumbarak has gained 445 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,760 specifically in North America and amongst the legal elites and 446 00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:49,360 digital leads, because these judges would go and teach and 447 00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:54,600 Yale and Harvard and Toronto, other professors from these 448 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,640 places will go also teach and Tel Aviv University and other 449 00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:01,120 universities. So this idea that Israeli legal 450 00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:06,320 system is advanced, is liberal, is human rights protecting, and 451 00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:11,360 that the occupation is under control, is under the rule of 452 00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:15,960 law, allowed, in my view, the prolongation of the apartheid 453 00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:21,160 occupation and the increasing violence of the colonial 454 00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:24,600 process. So an immediate effect that you 455 00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:29,560 see now is that once this veil of legitimacy, this veil of 456 00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:35,080 legality is removed, the ICC, the International Criminal 457 00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:40,240 Court, one of the conditions for access to justice in the 458 00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:43,320 International Court is that what we call complementarity. 459 00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:49,120 So if the domestic legal system is willing and able to prosecute 460 00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,040 Netanyahu and Ghaland and his people, the ICC will not 461 00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:55,400 intervene. But once everyone now recognises 462 00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:58,080 what we have been arguing for before the genocide, which is 463 00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,800 that there is no actual rule of law, This is a whole, you know, 464 00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:06,520 a facade that only legitimates and does not really protect the 465 00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,160 populations under the Israeli control. 466 00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:14,840 Once that removed, you can now activate and initiate the ICC 467 00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:17,080 much more easily. And that was one of our problems 468 00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,640 in the past couple of decades since the establishment of ICC 469 00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:24,640 in particular, is because you have these prosecutors who were, 470 00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:28,240 you know, the major figures in the ICC, including the founding 471 00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:32,560 prosecutor at the time who would, and including the current 472 00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:35,560 suspended prosecutor in the in the beginning of the genocide, 473 00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:38,920 who would continue to say, well, Israel has great lawyers, Israel 474 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,800 has the rule of law, Israel has judges, etcetera. 475 00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:46,680 So that shows, I think a misunderstanding of how 476 00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:51,440 complicit Israeli judiciary in the and obviously you would be 477 00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,880 aware that Israelis themselves are aware of how important this. 478 00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:58,720 So that's why they have international law department in 479 00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,160 the Israeli army. That's we have they have 480 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:04,680 thousands and thousands working, especially after the genocide, 481 00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:09,120 because they recognize the legitimacy effect of this kind 482 00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,480 of involvement and because they want to cover up and and give 483 00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,240 justifications and rationalizations for the 484 00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,800 horrendous actions of mass murder that they have been 485 00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,040 committing. Now to go back to Bharat, Why is 486 00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,960 it an important moment and is an example of what I'm talking 487 00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,760 about. In 2004, the the International 488 00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:31,200 Court of Justice was about to rule about the apartheid war, 489 00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:36,920 and it was one of the main and first cases in which the 490 00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:42,080 international legal system, the ICJ, is actually analyzing what 491 00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:48,880 is the legal status of Palestine since 96 and and and the Israeli 492 00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:53,080 control of it. At that time, Ariel Sharon was 493 00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:58,360 the Prime Minister. Haron Haron Barack was a member 494 00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:01,480 of the Kahan Committee, which was a committee that was 495 00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:05,200 established after Sabra and Shatila massacres and because of 496 00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:06,720 the commendations of that committee. 497 00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,880 Basically, Sharon was in exile from politics for about two 498 00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:15,400 decades, and then he returned in the early 2000s to crush the 499 00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:19,640 second Intifada and became the Prime Minister of Israel. 500 00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,080 And even though there's no love between these two individuals, 501 00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,200 Sharon understood the value of having a Haron Barack in the 502 00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,280 Supreme Court. So he argued public at the time 503 00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:36,000 that the Supreme Court and a Haron Barack will act as a 504 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:40,040 shield, as a first for Israel International arena. 505 00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:45,160 So one of the things that they did is that they published 506 00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,960 rulings before the ICJ ruled and they immediately translated it 507 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:51,560 into English. That doesn't usually happen that 508 00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:55,800 fast, but they understood the value from international public 509 00:32:55,800 --> 00:33:01,960 opinion aspect. And then once the ICJ said that 510 00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,320 the apartheid war is unlawful to the extent that it's established 511 00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:10,840 on the occupied 3697, they also produced another ruling that 512 00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:15,920 tried to respond to the ICJ. 20 years later, Netanyahu was doing 513 00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,360 the same. So in the two years before the 514 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:23,600 the genocide, Haron Barack was seen as this liberal figure that 515 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:30,000 is, you know, representing what the demonstrators against the 516 00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,240 so-called judicial coup that Netanyahu and his colleagues 517 00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,640 were trying to do, which is to undermine the independence of 518 00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,000 the judiciary, to increase the politicization of the judicial 519 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:44,520 appointment and so on so forth. So Haron Barack was a major 520 00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:49,320 figure hated by the right wing and liked by the liberals and 521 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,840 and Netanyahu was on the and he had nothing with the opposite 522 00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,640 sides. But once the genocide happens, 523 00:33:56,080 --> 00:34:00,720 immediately Netanyahu recruits the willing Haron Barack. 524 00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:03,840 And then Haron Barack, because of the reputation he gained 525 00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,600 internationally becomes a judge in the ICJ and he was the judge 526 00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:12,199 in the three proceedings. Well, actually there were 4 527 00:34:12,199 --> 00:34:16,000 requests, about 3 eventually proceedings in before the ICJ, 528 00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,320 before he retired for personal reasons. 529 00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,520 And now he was replaced by even more right wing Israeli legal 530 00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:26,360 scholar. So God knows and hopefully they, 531 00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,960 you know, time will tell what kind of work he did in the 532 00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:33,600 internal liberations in the court, because we have seen some 533 00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:36,639 of the obfuscation and some of these orders, provisional 534 00:34:36,639 --> 00:34:42,199 measures by the court in, in, in January, March and May 2024. 535 00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:44,199 And he was part of the these deliberations. 536 00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:48,679 So this is one way in which legitimation is not simply kind 537 00:34:48,679 --> 00:34:52,239 of a a, you know, reputational issue, which is very important 538 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:56,000 for the currency of Israel being the only democracy in the Middle 539 00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,800 East, at the helm of which is a Supreme Court that imposes the 540 00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:01,920 rule of law even against the likes of Netanyahu when it's 541 00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:07,160 necessary. Now we see more clearly that how 542 00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:11,160 complicit and how integrated that you share in any colonial 543 00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:15,120 situation, but differently in this one to the colonization of 544 00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:19,360 Palestine, to the covering up of mass crimes and, and, and 545 00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:21,080 including the genocide currently. 546 00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:24,320 And trying to defend it in public opinion. 547 00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:29,600 Not only to domestically to assure the population, including 548 00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:32,760 the liberal ones that you know, we are still a rule of law 549 00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,600 country, we're still a democratic country, but also 550 00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:41,120 externally with ramifications both for the ICC and the ICC. 551 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,880 It's, it's actually so interesting because even despite 552 00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:50,600 these attempts for the Israeli regime and the Israeli 553 00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,720 government to position themselves as, you know, 554 00:35:53,720 --> 00:35:59,080 respecting of human rights and this as liberal democracy, they 555 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,960 still pass this new death penalty law. 556 00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:07,520 Maybe because of the, I don't know, you're the expert in terms 557 00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:12,160 of how 11 relates to the other, but this new death penalty law 558 00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,840 has been described as discriminatory by design, as a 559 00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:19,360 war crime and also as a formalization of what was 560 00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:23,600 already happening in Israeli prisons through, you know, 561 00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,080 things like medical neglects that we saw martyrs like 562 00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:33,440 Hadradnan and and Willie Dhaka martyred because of. 563 00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:40,680 So I'm wondering, from a legal standpoint, how do you read this 564 00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:44,880 new bill? Is it a rupture in Israeli legal 565 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:49,560 history, or does it represent the logic of that history that 566 00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:53,160 is finally becoming complicit? And also, how does it relate to, 567 00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:58,200 you know, how do they hold these to maybe like positions next to 568 00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:01,000 each other whereby they, you know, try and do all of this 569 00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,440 work to position themselves as in step with, you know, 570 00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,560 international law and human rights law while simultaneously 571 00:37:07,720 --> 00:37:12,080 passing bills like this one that are such flagrant violations of, 572 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:16,080 of, of human rights? Yeah, I think this bill is a 573 00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:21,040 culmination of a process and solidification of that process. 574 00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:25,360 First of all, there's a, you know, with the increase of the 575 00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,360 right wing, obviously the right wing control of Israeli politics 576 00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,840 or dominance Israeli politics is something we have seen since 577 00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:38,760 1977. So there's an increasing control 578 00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:42,000 both in culturally and politically of the right wing. 579 00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:45,240 There was a limited period which allowed those to process and it 580 00:37:45,240 --> 00:37:48,200 was illegitimate from the right wing perspective because it's 581 00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:52,960 relied on the votes of the Brazilian minority members of 582 00:37:52,960 --> 00:38:00,360 Knesset in the Knesset. And so the this change in how 583 00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:05,880 the both self perception and presentation is exemplified in 584 00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:10,960 the 2018 Basic Law, as well as the nation state of the Jewish 585 00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:15,360 people, which allowed human rights organizations to finally 586 00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:16,960 say that this is an apartheid state. 587 00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:21,360 So following that law which constitutionalizes apartheid, 588 00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:25,480 which declares that only one sovereignty for one people exist 589 00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:29,400 from the river to the sea. So that includes the settlement 590 00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:33,640 on the West Bank. So the Amnesty International, 591 00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,360 Human Rights Watch, following that law said in 2021-2022 that 592 00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:38,800 this is an apartheid. Why? 593 00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:42,320 Because it's cannot be denied anymore because we are putting 594 00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:44,960 it in law in ways they did not before. 595 00:38:45,240 --> 00:38:47,280 Before the law was much more technical. 596 00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,480 And there's, you know, rarely it would that it would say, you 597 00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,640 know, Arab or Palestinian, it would say it in very technical 598 00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:58,280 terms that would effectively deny rights from the 599 00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,200 Palestinians or privileged Jews over non Jews. 600 00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,640 And then the second other law that also makes it very explicit 601 00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,240 is the death penalty law. And that's why we see some of 602 00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:12,600 the reaction from European Court states, because it it it 603 00:39:12,720 --> 00:39:15,040 injuries their liberal sensibilities. 604 00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:18,280 But if you look at this transformation, well, this law I 605 00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:20,920 think shows is both on the expressive level, on the 606 00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:23,120 ideological level, on the expressive level. 607 00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:28,080 The in the government today in Israel, there are, you know, 608 00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:31,720 being weird and smooth region. These people, they come from the 609 00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:37,680 far right tradition of Kahana and Kahana and Kahana High. 610 00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:42,960 And all these and Kahana, as your your viewers might know, 611 00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,240 was declared in different times by both Israelis and the 612 00:39:46,240 --> 00:39:50,400 Americans as a terrorist organization, violent, racist. 613 00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,280 He was also denied access to parliament, was disqualified 614 00:39:54,280 --> 00:40:00,160 from representation in the end of the 80s in Israel itself, and 615 00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:04,520 Bengveed himself in 2007, I think, was convicted for 616 00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:06,960 incitement to terrorism and incitement to racism because of 617 00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,240 his ideological affiliation with this group. 618 00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:14,880 Now this group and some of them are expressed in by fans like 619 00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:19,800 the ultras and you know, football stadiums in particular 620 00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:25,600 Bettario Salaim and all these football teams is known for the 621 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,400 death to Arabs chant. So death to Arabs now became 622 00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:34,040 law. Death to Arabs was a chant by, 623 00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:38,360 you know, some factions and stadiums and, you know, Bing the 624 00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:41,440 Bing vias would say death to Arabs and then they would ask 625 00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:43,720 and they would say pushed and they would say, well, death to 626 00:40:43,720 --> 00:40:45,880 terrorists. So this conflation between Arabs 627 00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:47,600 and terrorists has existed for some time. 628 00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:54,280 But this bill, what this bill means is that the fantasy and 629 00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:57,920 this minority ideological position and at least in the way 630 00:40:57,920 --> 00:40:59,600 it expresses itself, becomes law. 631 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,640 These people are now ministers of government and it's law. 632 00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,960 And there's over 60 members of the parliament who voted for it. 633 00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:09,560 So it's not only Bengveer and his colleagues and, you know, 634 00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:13,480 the fascist party, but also the more centrist right wing parties 635 00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:15,760 and the more centrist parties and more generally Israel. 636 00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:20,720 But there's also another sense in which the reality becomes 637 00:41:20,720 --> 00:41:23,520 law. So since October 23, we have, 638 00:41:23,720 --> 00:41:27,600 you know, death on unprecedented scale, death to Arabs, right? 639 00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:31,000 Arabs are being killed in Gaza, in the West Bank. 640 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,680 Yeah, but there's also Arabs being killed inside the Pasini 641 00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,880 Manor inside Israel. So Bengveer is the minister who 642 00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:41,440 is in charge of the police, which means he's in charge of 643 00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,600 the so-called rule of law and enforced law and order inside 644 00:41:45,720 --> 00:41:47,280 the personal communities inside Israel. 645 00:41:47,720 --> 00:41:52,960 And, and under his rule, we saw a spite, a spike in, in how many 646 00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,120 people are killed by organized crime, you know, killings and, 647 00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,880 and, and domestically. And so that's also another way 648 00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:05,680 you can have death to Arabs by lawlessness, lack of personal 649 00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:08,840 safety and people killing each other without any enforcement 650 00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:12,240 whatsoever from the law. So that's the kind of expressive 651 00:42:12,240 --> 00:42:15,960 level in which I see this law as working. 652 00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:17,600 But there's also the ideological level. 653 00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:23,480 Now, if you look at the how the colonization happens. 654 00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,480 So it's both the the land and the people. 655 00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:28,960 In terms of the land, you have the creation of what the ICJ 656 00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,440 called the coercive environment to force people to leave. 657 00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:37,800 Land confiscation harms the militias, you know, bad 658 00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,920 employment and education condition and the rest of it. 659 00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:47,080 And then you have the people and the people here, sorry, the, 660 00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:49,040 the, the land concession, but also the people here are the 661 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,440 main 2 elements I think that have been under attack 662 00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:55,920 especially since October 23, are the refugees and the prisoners. 663 00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:00,960 Why these two, the refugees? Because they are, you know, 2/3 664 00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:05,000 of the Australians are refugees. The refugees, their mere mere 665 00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,360 existence is the question of Palestine. 666 00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,800 Their continuity of a political consciousness amongst them of 667 00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:13,280 return is the question of Palestine. 668 00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:18,760 So the attack on Inurua before, you know, October 23 during the 669 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,320 first Trump administration, but more so since October 23 under 670 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:28,000 one agency that is designated to provide services for health and 671 00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:32,160 education for personal refugees around the Middle East is part 672 00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,560 of this attack on Reggies. But more so after October 23 is 673 00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:40,040 the attack and destruction of refugee camps in near Jenin and 674 00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:44,040 particular and sorry and Pur Karim in particular. 675 00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:46,840 But in previous rounds of fighters like in the when 676 00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:50,080 Israeli invaded Lebanon 1982, they also destroyed at least 677 00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:53,800 three refugee camps, Rashidi, Abuja, Barajneh and obviously 678 00:43:53,800 --> 00:44:00,360 sub Rashidi level massacre. So the other element is the 679 00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:03,120 prisoners. Now, the prisoners are the, you 680 00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:05,560 know, the refugees and the prisoners are the human engine 681 00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,880 of the, you know, the Pastinian, but the prisoners in particular 682 00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:14,320 because they are the militant, the mobilized element of the 683 00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:18,520 Palestinian population. And we have seen over time, you 684 00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:21,920 know, a deterioration of the conditions of these prisoners, 685 00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:29,880 including in 2018, there was a law that withheld contributions 686 00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:34,560 to the prisoners from the Palestinian Authority to, you 687 00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,960 know, prisoners of martyrs. And I think in February 2025, 688 00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:43,200 the Israeli treasury said they had withheld 4.4 billion of 689 00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:47,440 Persian money, including these marines that should be go to the 690 00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:51,360 prisoners. So there was other, other laws 691 00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:57,920 about the family visits and the like and the deportation of 692 00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:02,680 family members of prisoners and martyrs to make it easier. 693 00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:08,040 And then by October 2023, we see obviously you know, the 694 00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:12,640 overcrowded nature of the prisons, the starvation, the 695 00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,680 torture on a systematic and systematic way. 696 00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,480 Even before October ribbing, we was talking about no bakeries, 697 00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:23,320 no fresh bread for these, you know, no barbecues, etcetera. 698 00:45:23,720 --> 00:45:30,200 So trying to and then using October 2023 to further 699 00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,640 accelerate the deterioration of these conditions. 700 00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:37,840 But to the extent that now we're talking not only about 701 00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:41,120 criminalizing resistance, when I was talking about eradicating 702 00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:43,960 resistance, destroying this, because these are conditions 703 00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:50,240 that in which people die and are killed in a higher rate than we 704 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:58,880 have seen in the decades before. So I see this bill as basically, 705 00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:03,880 you know, an attack on these prisoners and an attempt to, as 706 00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:08,960 an instrument of the genocide process, process itself in order 707 00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:14,240 to not only criminalize resistance, as I said, but to 708 00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:18,480 destroy it. And one way you talked a bit 709 00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:22,480 about how the Israeli legal system, one of its main roles is 710 00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:27,320 to reshape the national consciousness and to discipline 711 00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,960 Palestinians on a daily basis. And one aspect of that, one 712 00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:32,840 method of that is torture, right? 713 00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:38,480 Torture inside Israeli prisons So 1 common framing positions 714 00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:44,200 torture as abuse or as something happening in the gaps despite 715 00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:48,080 the law. But scholars like Ali Dhaka or 716 00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:52,440 Raw of Strake argue that torture is not incidental to to Israeli 717 00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,240 colonial rule, but actually constitutive of it. 718 00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:00,240 They argue that it functions to, like you said, to reshape 719 00:47:00,240 --> 00:47:04,200 passing consciousness and extend punishment beyond the individual 720 00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,160 into the family and the community, and ultimately 721 00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:12,600 producing a regime of fear that sustains the colonial project. 722 00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:16,600 Francesca Albanese recently described this as torture 723 00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:21,680 becoming state doctrine. So in your opinion, what role 724 00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:26,960 does torture as routine rather than exceptional practice play 725 00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:30,120 in Israel's attempt to destroy Palestine as a place in 726 00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:34,760 Palestinians as a people? Indeed, torture is important 727 00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:40,080 because it's one of the few rights in international law that 728 00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:45,400 are absolute. And yet, as you said, Israel has 729 00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,920 a practice in torture for a long time, even before October 23. 730 00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:55,040 I mentioned earlier the Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 1999 on 731 00:47:55,240 --> 00:47:57,720 torture. Now in that ruling they didn't 732 00:47:57,720 --> 00:48:02,040 even mention the word torture and it was limited to four or 733 00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:08,640 five interrogation techniques only and limited also to 734 00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:11,880 particular facilities, not to the one governed by the 735 00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,640 military. Now, one way in which torture is 736 00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:20,880 represented as an exceptional case is the so-called time 737 00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:25,280 taking, taking time bomb situations in which, you know, 738 00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:30,640 we are trying to save lies in particular situations and 739 00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,640 therefore we are employing exceptional means in that 740 00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:37,400 situation. But in the case of the way how 741 00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:44,040 Israel practiced it practiced it, this became repeated, 742 00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:49,560 institutionalized and prolonged. So in this way it doesn't become 743 00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,360 as exceptional as it's often claimed. 744 00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:57,640 And in fact, the ruling itself in 1999 said, you know, carved 745 00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:01,920 out a legal loophole called necessity that, you know, these 746 00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:08,440 practices cannot, are prohibited unless there's a necessity. 747 00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:11,840 And then basically all the interrogators of the Israeli 748 00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:13,960 intelligence started claiming necessity. 749 00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:19,480 So it created the loophole by which torture can be, and became 750 00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:23,480 indeed institutionalized. Similar to like Guantanamo Bay 751 00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,760 or Abu Kharib or this kind of global war and terror discourse. 752 00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:33,680 Yeah, indeed, in in the 2000s, following the second father, the 753 00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:37,880 Israelis legislated the so-called unlawful combatants 754 00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:42,200 laws in order to create exactly these liminal spaces in which 755 00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:45,400 these are not criminal prisoners, meaning they're not 756 00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:50,760 protected by criminal procedure and the rise of defendants in a 757 00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:55,840 regular ordinary trials. Nor are they prisoners of war 758 00:49:56,320 --> 00:50:00,080 and therefore governed by the Geneva Conventions and 759 00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:04,280 international humanitarian law. But rather in a space where they 760 00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:06,080 are not given these kind of protections. 761 00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:14,720 And it's much more arbitrary and whimsical and undermines their 762 00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:21,720 basic rights as as prisoners. But what also since October 763 00:50:21,720 --> 00:50:27,560 2023, the transformation we see is that it is no longer claimed 764 00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:32,440 that this torture is to obtain information, but rather it's 765 00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:36,680 torture to kill them. It's medical neglect to allow 766 00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:39,960 them to die. There is no pretence that there 767 00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:43,600 are any, you know, trials that can happen anytime soon. 768 00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:46,400 We are almost three years since the beginning of the genocide 769 00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:52,360 and people have been tortured and and another element of this 770 00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:56,000 also the numbers that are being tortured compared to before 771 00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,680 October 2023. So these numbers show that 772 00:50:59,920 --> 00:51:01,920 again, it's not an exceptional occurrence. 773 00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:05,640 So whatever the claims before October 2023, these claims do 774 00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:10,240 not hold after October 2023. But obviously the context now is 775 00:51:10,240 --> 00:51:15,320 different because now torture is not simply to suppress 776 00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:19,600 resistance under apartheid. Now torture is to destroy under 777 00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:22,360 genocide. So now torture is an instrument 778 00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:27,000 of a genocidal process itself. It's another way of, as I said 779 00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,120 before, death drop as killing Palestinians. 780 00:51:30,720 --> 00:51:34,280 And, you know, we don't need to go into detail about how 781 00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:37,480 ridiculous Israeli arguments are, but one of the main cases I 782 00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:43,200 think that surfaced in the media was an 80 plus a Palestinian 783 00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:48,320 woman who had Alzheimer who was held for months and months as an 784 00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:52,600 unlawful combatant from Gaza. So that shows you that there is 785 00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:56,800 no due process, there is no claims for any protections for 786 00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:01,400 rights since October 2023. But these are the kind of legal 787 00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:04,840 technical arguments that are used in order to give what you 788 00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,120 call before the veil of legitimacy or the veil of 789 00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:13,400 legality on a completely and fundamentally unjust situation. 790 00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:18,400 But it's interesting about the recent discourse that Francisco 791 00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:26,240 Beniz's report also advocated is that torture can be the specific 792 00:52:26,240 --> 00:52:31,080 act vis A vis the prisoners or group of prisoners, but it also 793 00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,080 can be the creation of a torturous environment. 794 00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:41,760 So this is what Pao Perez Salis argued for as a conceptual 795 00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:44,960 framework in one of his books and then used by Francisco 796 00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:49,280 Benazin AIR recent report. And this is also relates to what 797 00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:54,880 Walid Dhaka that you mentioned conceptualized as the small 798 00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,680 prison and the bigger prison. So the tortuous environment can 799 00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:02,400 manifest in different ways and in a way you can talk about the 800 00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:07,240 whole of the West Bank and Gaza as a tortuous environment, as 801 00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:11,120 different techniques that Israel has inflicted on the population 802 00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:16,280 to make their lives hell and therefore deprive them from the 803 00:53:16,280 --> 00:53:21,000 right to movement, which is akin to incarceration in the in the 804 00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:25,000 2nd and father, we had over like 523 in the beginning of the 805 00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:29,640 second father, 523 checkpoints between, in, in inside the West 806 00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:31,440 Bank, between the different villages and communities. 807 00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:35,200 Now, I'll talk about over 900 of these. 808 00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:40,480 So that's a creation of prisons cells instead of, you know, one 809 00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:42,320 room. It will be a town, but it'll be 810 00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:46,640 surrounded by different manned and unmanned checkpoints, 811 00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:51,480 therefore limiting the ability of having basic, you know, goods 812 00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:55,920 in and out, basic health services, but also under the 813 00:53:55,920 --> 00:54:00,560 right of movement and, you know, exit from the communities as you 814 00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:02,680 wish if you were in a free country. 815 00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,520 One interesting element of this is that actually when Rafael 816 00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:12,000 Lemkin conceptualized the idea of genocide, he was saying, 817 00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,680 well, prisoners have something called the Geneva Conventions 818 00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:16,720 where they can be prisoners of war. 819 00:54:16,720 --> 00:54:18,800 They can be protected as prisoners of war. 820 00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:25,400 But nations, the entire nations, their lives can be validated and 821 00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:29,360 they have no protection. So the but so, but these are 822 00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:32,560 nations under occupation, nations in prison. 823 00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:37,160 So they conceptualized the idea of genocide while talking about 824 00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,520 nations as imprisoned nations. And it's important to understand 825 00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:45,040 that genocide for him and the way it's actually started, was 826 00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:48,520 about a technique of an occupation, a colonial 827 00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:55,880 occupation, in this case, employing dehumanizing and 828 00:54:55,880 --> 00:55:01,040 demeaning methods for decades institutionalized in Jewish 829 00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:05,480 supremacy, in apartheid, in occupation, and creating a 830 00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:09,520 carcel system, which is something that actually 831 00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:12,600 Francisco Albrezi referred to in a previous report before October 832 00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:16,520 20231 fire report, is about this system of incarceration. 833 00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:19,880 This system of surveillance is infected on millions of 834 00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:21,880 Palestinians in the West Bank of Gaza. 835 00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:26,160 And obviously the ultimate case of prison is Gaza and the way it 836 00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:28,400 was treated, at least since 2007. 837 00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:33,240 Yeah, I want to follow up on that question in terms of like 838 00:55:33,240 --> 00:55:36,480 what you were saying about the small prison and the big prison, 839 00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:44,960 this torturous environment, this idea of Palestine as prison. 840 00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,360 And something we talked about before we started recording this 841 00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:53,920 podcast was also how the conditions of of prisoners over, 842 00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,080 you know, the last few decades have significantly deteriorated. 843 00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:02,080 So could you speak a bit about that deterioration? 844 00:56:02,720 --> 00:56:05,920 And if you want to touch on your experience also working with 845 00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:08,080 prisoners, I think that would be that would be useful. 846 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:12,720 And also how that deterioration of the condition in prisoners 847 00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:17,280 has also translated to the condition of Palestinians living 848 00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:21,360 it across Palestine outside of prisons. 849 00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:25,080 Yeah, there's a question of prisoners is important for 850 00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:27,920 Palestinians because we're talking about huge numbers of 851 00:56:27,920 --> 00:56:31,400 Palestinians since 1967 who were in prison. 852 00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:36,240 Obviously many were in prison before 1967, but since 1967, 853 00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:40,160 with the control of a large Palestinian population in the 854 00:56:40,160 --> 00:56:42,560 West Bank, Gaza, the numbers have increased. 855 00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:47,480 So I mean the the numbers are vary and I don't think we have 856 00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:50,200 accurate numbers, but we're talking about hundreds of 857 00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:52,840 thousands of Palestinians who have been imprisoned. 858 00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:57,080 And there's almost no family of Palestinian family in the West 859 00:56:57,080 --> 00:56:59,160 Bengal. Gaza did not experience some 860 00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:03,320 form of detention, incarceration by at least one member of the 861 00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:05,400 family. So the prison experience is 862 00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:11,400 formative for Palestinian, and the role of the prisoners in the 863 00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:17,640 Palestinian national movement and the Palestinian liberation 864 00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:21,680 struggle and the Palestinian consciousness is also crucial. 865 00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,560 Many of the leaders were prisoners or former prisoners 866 00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:28,000 and so on. And it has always been the case 867 00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,160 that all the Palestinian movements have maintained 868 00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:36,120 organized structures inside the prisoners, the prisons 869 00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:39,520 themselves. So you know, they would have 870 00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:43,520 meetings, reading, education, etcetera, and ideological 871 00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:45,240 divides within the. Prison itself, and these are 872 00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:46,520 rights they won through hunger strike. 873 00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:50,080 And these were mobilized during, specifically during hunger 874 00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:53,240 strikes, but it was always communication between inside and 875 00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:56,000 outside the prison in order to maintain that movement. 876 00:57:56,000 --> 00:58:00,600 And the prisoners themselves has always had a say in the external 877 00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:02,600 issues. And if you remember like, well, 878 00:58:02,600 --> 00:58:06,880 there was one attempt to do some kind of unity or reconciliation 879 00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:10,680 between Hamas and, and, and Fatah after Hamas takeover of 880 00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:14,720 Gaza called the prisoner's document in Saudi Arabia. 881 00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:21,320 So we're always an important part of, of, of the movement And 882 00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:29,120 the conditions have deteriorated because as, as you said, and I, 883 00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,160 I saw this first hand because I, as, as a lawyer, I, you know, in 884 00:58:32,200 --> 00:58:35,920 1999 and afterwards, I have visited many prisoners, 885 00:58:35,920 --> 00:58:40,320 including the later in Dhaka. So what we have seen throughout 886 00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:44,160 this, these years that there's increasing restrictions, such as 887 00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:50,760 the divide between a lawyer and a prisoner, you know, the glass 888 00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:55,200 divide, the phones, while previously it was much more 889 00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:59,480 ability to communicate with them and to meet them than 890 00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:04,000 afterwards. And the, they used to have 891 00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:08,600 access to duration throughout this, the 2000s that was also 892 00:59:08,600 --> 00:59:11,040 denied. So that means that many of them 893 00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:14,880 studied by correspondents in the Open University and got degrees 894 00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:18,920 in political science. And the rest of it, they used to 895 00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:21,160 have, you know, TV channels and newspapers and the rest of it 896 00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:23,760 that also was taken progressively. 897 00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:30,360 The hunger strikes obviously is a is, is a again. 898 00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:32,360 And they're they're more generated strikes that the 899 00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:37,920 prisoners have mobilized throughout decades in order to 900 00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:41,280 protect their rights and to advance their position in the 901 00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:45,840 system and to try to repel some of the more oppressive and 902 00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:49,240 excessive practice in the prison system against them. 903 00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:56,440 We're in many ways kind of broken in the in the 2000s and 904 00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,800 the following aftermath of the second intifada. 905 01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:03,960 And, you know, the Israelis have achieved this in different ways. 906 01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:07,720 So when they identified someone like Ritaka as a leader of the 907 01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:12,200 movement, they would keep moving him between prisons frequently. 908 01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:15,040 And the movement would be between prisons is very 909 01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:19,240 difficult for prisoners because the conditions are much more 910 01:00:19,240 --> 01:00:21,320 difficult than in the permanent prison. 911 01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:24,400 The conditions in transit are very difficult for them. 912 01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:28,000 So they had moved somewhat like very, you know, frequently in 913 01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:34,040 the, I think around 2004 in one of the hunger strikes and in 914 01:00:34,040 --> 01:00:38,360 order to break the movement. Unfortunately, one of the things 915 01:00:38,360 --> 01:00:43,360 that we have seen is that the prisoners movement was infected 916 01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:46,400 by the divisions outside prisons. 917 01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:51,160 So the increasing fragmentation in the Pastinian body politic in 918 01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:55,480 the West Bank and Gaza led to situation where we started 919 01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:58,280 seeing in the prison that the division becomes not only 920 01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,080 according to cities, but even according to, you know, 921 01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:03,240 particular towns or religious or camps. 922 01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,400 And the way it was organized. And the perse movements 923 01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:11,880 themselves in many cases became weaker and didn't have the same 924 01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:16,000 kind of structural, you know, and educational and disciplinary 925 01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:20,240 hold as they used to in the past. 926 01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:24,160 And again, that reflects the weakness more generally outside 927 01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:28,240 the prisoner itself. And obviously after October 928 01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:31,240 2023, it becomes much more acute. 929 01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:36,960 One of the unresolved issues I think about the prisoners 930 01:01:36,960 --> 01:01:42,080 movement is that a lot of the prisoners who would be released 931 01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:46,680 or leave prison given the general conditions and you know, 932 01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:49,760 specifically, specifically after October 23, they don't get 933 01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:53,840 enough social support, psychological support, social 934 01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,840 work support. Because you know, if you leave 935 01:01:56,840 --> 01:01:59,160 prison after 20 years or 30 years, especially if you want to 936 01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:02,080 watch etcetera, that would require a lot of support. 937 01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:07,080 And the current conditions of destructions of our communities 938 01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:11,920 and the withholding of money from the families of, you know, 939 01:02:12,520 --> 01:02:13,960 that are given by the passing authority. 940 01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:17,160 All of that weakens the ability to integrate many of these 941 01:02:17,160 --> 01:02:22,400 prisoners before October 23. Definitely, but also it's. 942 01:02:23,600 --> 01:02:29,960 Also interesting because like you said, even though some of 943 01:02:29,960 --> 01:02:34,720 the disunity that maybe exists outside of the prison has 944 01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:38,480 entered the prison, we also see that the prisoner struggle has 945 01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:42,320 always been a reminder of the importance of of unity in the 946 01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:44,200 Palestinian struggle. There are times where, for 947 01:02:44,200 --> 01:02:46,960 example, there has been fragmentation on the Palestinian 948 01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:50,920 St. and it's messages from the prisoners of unity for people to 949 01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:55,840 kind of overcome factionalism and and to insist on unity in 950 01:02:55,840 --> 01:02:59,280 the face of attempts at fragmentation. 951 01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:03,960 Also, we saw, for example, like in the aftermath of October 7th, 952 01:03:04,280 --> 01:03:09,040 2023, a lot of the prisoners being released came from all 953 01:03:09,040 --> 01:03:13,080 different Palestinian factions. So I think even amongst, you 954 01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:16,840 know, increased attempts to fragment our people, I think the 955 01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:20,280 prison struggle has been able in in many ways to, to maintain 956 01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:25,640 unity in the face of of Zionism. Indeed, I mean the, the, the 957 01:03:25,640 --> 01:03:29,560 unifying condition of prison and the unifying condition of 958 01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:37,200 oppression should and in many cases, as you say, does remind 959 01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:41,680 us of you know who's the enemy and you know what kind of 960 01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:45,400 resources are required to overcome this kind of 961 01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:48,320 oppression. And sometimes outside the 962 01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:52,520 prison, because of the the way in which political system works 963 01:03:52,520 --> 01:03:57,120 is a political systems work, is that there are rewards for 964 01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:02,760 particular political positions, such as, you know, the personnel 965 01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:06,200 authority and the fact that if you want to continue to exist, 966 01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:11,600 you will have to in many ways compromise on a variety of 967 01:04:11,600 --> 01:04:15,640 issues because they are funded by external powers and they are 968 01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:18,760 trained by external powers. And, you know, to be able to 969 01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:23,880 exit or enter, you know, Israeli will has has the the key to 970 01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:27,280 that. So that leads occasionally to 971 01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:34,000 political positions that undermine the national unity, 972 01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:38,200 undermine the national movement. But as you correctly you know 973 01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:43,920 stated, the prisoners can be a reminder of what is required, 974 01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:51,680 which is a unified body politic if not institutional 975 01:04:51,960 --> 01:04:58,680 representation in order to show that the person is eventually or 976 01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:01,760 despite the older factions or their ideological positions 977 01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:04,680 eventually want the same basic thing which is freedom. 978 01:05:04,920 --> 01:05:10,720 Yeah, so zooming out a bit, over the past three years, we've been 979 01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:13,400 hearing a lot of discourse about, you know, the the 980 01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:16,560 international rules based order being a sham. 981 01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:19,520 A lot of people have lost faith in international law. 982 01:05:20,720 --> 01:05:25,640 The execution bill passed with the US declining to condemn it. 983 01:05:25,640 --> 01:05:28,800 The State Department described it as Israel's sovereign right. 984 01:05:29,520 --> 01:05:32,080 Britain, France, Germany and Italy urged against it but 985 01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:37,920 issued no consequences. So what do you think? 986 01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:42,600 How can you think about the transnational legal strategies 987 01:05:42,600 --> 01:05:44,520 of solidarity that currently exists? 988 01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:49,480 You talked about the, the ICJ proceedings, the ICC warrants 989 01:05:50,480 --> 01:05:54,080 and universal jurisdiction cases in terms of what they can and 990 01:05:54,080 --> 01:05:57,160 cannot achieve against the regime that has learned to 991 01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,120 operate within the gaps of international law. 992 01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:04,840 Like like what are are their hopes for international law? 993 01:06:04,840 --> 01:06:08,640 Like what do people think about, you know, the the third world 994 01:06:08,640 --> 01:06:11,760 approaches to international law movement, for example, is that 995 01:06:11,760 --> 01:06:15,440 can that still be salvage? Yeah. 996 01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:21,200 I mean, the question of international law is a question 997 01:06:21,200 --> 01:06:26,320 of positioning. So for me, if you look at the 998 01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:28,360 history of international law, if there are someone coming from 999 01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:32,000 the global S, if there are someone coming from Yemen, from 1000 01:06:32,000 --> 01:06:34,400 Palestine, international law never worked for you. 1001 01:06:35,400 --> 01:06:37,440 So if you look at the international law from below, 1002 01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:42,360 you are less likely to be said to be, you know, one of those 1003 01:06:42,360 --> 01:06:45,880 who are now suddenly disenchanted with international 1004 01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:48,320 law, talk about the death of international law, etcetera. 1005 01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:54,120 It is true, obviously that is a transformative moment that Gaza 1006 01:06:54,120 --> 01:06:59,760 is a world event, that Gaza unveiled the condition of 1007 01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:06,040 selectivity, the condition of complete or entire population 1008 01:07:06,040 --> 01:07:08,840 that are not really protected by international law. 1009 01:07:09,160 --> 01:07:12,520 That law can be effective in certain situation, but it's not 1010 01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:16,440 effective in these situation. It can be mobilized against 1011 01:07:16,440 --> 01:07:19,560 Russia because the any of the West, but it's not mobilized. 1012 01:07:20,040 --> 01:07:23,240 And the reaction that you mentioned to the death penalty 1013 01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:29,280 law is instructive because these countries like the, you know, 1014 01:07:29,280 --> 01:07:33,240 Britain that criticize the law are the same countries of the 1015 01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:37,320 complicity and genocide. So your liberal sensibilities 1016 01:07:37,320 --> 01:07:43,000 are against capital punishment and some are execution, but you 1017 01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:47,960 allow the mass murder of whole entire population, the killing 1018 01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:51,600 of 20,000 children. So that again shows, you know, 1019 01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:55,280 the reaction shows what is wrong with enters Allah, that the 1020 01:07:55,280 --> 01:08:01,280 claimed universality was never actually genuine and that the 1021 01:08:01,280 --> 01:08:03,920 reason why there's an outcry now, because there's a 1022 01:08:03,920 --> 01:08:09,120 realization that it doesn't really work at all as it should 1023 01:08:09,120 --> 01:08:12,600 be. And the fact that the moment in 1024 01:08:12,600 --> 01:08:15,560 which these tools that were constructed after the Second 1025 01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:19,319 World War were directed against someone who's an who's an ally 1026 01:08:19,319 --> 01:08:23,560 of the West, you know, that's the ICC arrest warrants against 1027 01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:27,080 Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICGA case against Israel. 1028 01:08:28,279 --> 01:08:31,960 They wanted those who claimed the rules based order against 1029 01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:37,439 Russia or against China, etcetera, are now renouncing it 1030 01:08:37,640 --> 01:08:41,399 and want to destroy it or want to make it clear that it's not 1031 01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:45,800 about, you know, accountability for the West. 1032 01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:48,960 It's about accountability to the enemies of the West. 1033 01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:57,880 So I think this is a moment of on the one hand, looking in a 1034 01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:00,760 sober way and realistically about what international law is, 1035 01:09:00,760 --> 01:09:03,640 what isn't, what are the advantages and the pitfall, the 1036 01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:06,040 pitfalls of the limitations of using international law. 1037 01:09:06,399 --> 01:09:09,399 So this is the something we as Palestinians have been, you 1038 01:09:09,399 --> 01:09:11,520 know, talking about legal scholars, at least we're talking 1039 01:09:11,520 --> 01:09:17,520 about for for a long time. And at the moment of genocide, 1040 01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:24,760 the mobilization of the ICC and the ICJ was really crucial 1041 01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:30,080 because if you look at international law in the context 1042 01:09:30,080 --> 01:09:32,560 in which we witnessed the genocide. 1043 01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:37,359 So law compared to politics, international relations, the UN 1044 01:09:37,359 --> 01:09:39,880 General Assembly, the UN Security Council, their lack of 1045 01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:45,160 action, the media, the complete mobilization of Western 1046 01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:48,720 mainstream media to support the genocide, the British 1047 01:09:48,720 --> 01:09:55,320 Parliament, etcetera. The ICJ was suddenly one of the 1048 01:09:55,320 --> 01:09:59,800 few limited spaces in which you can tell the Palestinian story, 1049 01:09:59,880 --> 01:10:02,560 a comprehensive narrative of what happened to the 1050 01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:07,080 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 till that moment, 1051 01:10:07,240 --> 01:10:11,040 December 2023, and to deal with the arguments on the basis of 1052 01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:15,640 fact and some rationality in assessing these arguments. 1053 01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:20,960 And then once the ICJ rules, that becomes an earthquake 1054 01:10:22,080 --> 01:10:28,520 because it mobilized the Genocide Convention that 1055 01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:34,120 supposedly was created following the Holocaust against Israel, a 1056 01:10:34,120 --> 01:10:37,360 state that supposedly was created after the obviously the 1057 01:10:37,360 --> 01:10:39,280 narrative that it was created because of the hocus is not 1058 01:10:39,280 --> 01:10:42,400 correct because the Zen's project started before, but 1059 01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:44,280 that's the narrative that was also shattered. 1060 01:10:44,960 --> 01:10:48,680 Now the narrative of self-defense as well that Israel 1061 01:10:48,680 --> 01:10:52,840 claimed after October 23 is irrelevant when it comes to 1062 01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:54,800 genocide. So that's why also something 1063 01:10:54,800 --> 01:10:59,240 that gets suddenly a finally a push back in an international 1064 01:10:59,520 --> 01:11:06,800 arena and then the March and the May 2024, they become legal 1065 01:11:06,800 --> 01:11:10,080 documents of the highest international judicial authority 1066 01:11:10,080 --> 01:11:16,160 in which the demands from Israel and the violations of these 1067 01:11:16,640 --> 01:11:23,000 rules are clear to everyone. And the more Israel and its 1068 01:11:23,000 --> 01:11:29,480 allies violate or ignore these rules, the more the lawlessness 1069 01:11:29,760 --> 01:11:34,880 of the situation becomes clear. Now, obviously, these rulings 1070 01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:37,320 did not stop Israel or restricted in any fundamental 1071 01:11:37,320 --> 01:11:40,600 way or the US and, you know, those who were complicit in 1072 01:11:41,160 --> 01:11:44,720 financing and funding and arming Israel. 1073 01:11:45,560 --> 01:11:49,160 But it did give cover to students. 1074 01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:52,440 It did cover cover to labor unions. 1075 01:11:52,440 --> 01:11:58,720 It did cover to, you know, new perspectives in in the media to 1076 01:11:58,720 --> 01:12:01,720 demonstrators because if you remember, students were being 1077 01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:04,360 kicked out of universities. They said genocide, You know, 1078 01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:07,880 the demonstrations against the genocide were being called hate 1079 01:12:07,880 --> 01:12:10,960 marches and attempts to suppress them is underway. 1080 01:12:11,320 --> 01:12:15,600 And then suddenly all these people are getting the cover or 1081 01:12:15,600 --> 01:12:19,280 the backup from the highest international court. 1082 01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:21,800 So that's again part of the legitimacy war. 1083 01:12:22,160 --> 01:12:25,960 And then the ICC arrest warrants is another element of the 1084 01:12:28,080 --> 01:12:32,120 legitimacy war, that Israel is now a rogue state. 1085 01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:38,760 Israel is now a lawless state and its leaders are fugitives, 1086 01:12:39,560 --> 01:12:44,280 are war criminals, not because Neymar or Nehal or Janine say 1087 01:12:44,280 --> 01:12:46,320 that. We said about them war criminals 1088 01:12:46,320 --> 01:12:50,800 for a long time, but now in public discussions it's also the 1089 01:12:50,800 --> 01:12:54,680 ICC and the ICJ is saying this. It's not some radical extremist 1090 01:12:54,680 --> 01:12:57,120 position, it's the actual legal position. 1091 01:12:57,280 --> 01:12:59,240 It's the actual mainstream opposition. 1092 01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:01,680 The same with the apartheid thing. 1093 01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:08,960 So once you know many of us have spent a long time in the 2000s 1094 01:13:10,360 --> 01:13:13,720 touring university campuses talking about the apartheid in 1095 01:13:13,720 --> 01:13:16,640 the apartheid weeks, Israeli apartheid weeks that started in 1096 01:13:16,640 --> 01:13:20,120 western Toronto and that was considered at the time some kind 1097 01:13:20,120 --> 01:13:24,920 of radical out there position. And then 2021-2022 the two 1098 01:13:24,920 --> 01:13:27,840 mainstream humorous organizations said say apartheid 1099 01:13:28,160 --> 01:13:31,520 500 pages, the 2 reports in combined. 1100 01:13:31,880 --> 01:13:38,200 That's a major vindication of the Pasilian or the critical 1101 01:13:38,200 --> 01:13:40,040 position, the anti colonial position. 1102 01:13:40,440 --> 01:13:45,240 And then again the ICJ in July 2024, when they mentioned a 1103 01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:48,920 little bit in a kind of awkward formulation, but they said as 1104 01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:52,440 well as violating Article 3 of the Convention against for the 1105 01:13:52,440 --> 01:13:55,040 elimination of racial discrimination, Article 3 1106 01:13:55,040 --> 01:13:59,120 prohibits racial segregation or apartheid and apartheid. 1107 01:13:59,680 --> 01:14:05,680 So that means there are leaps and legal discourse that are 1108 01:14:06,360 --> 01:14:12,520 very important in the legitimacy claim of the Israeli state they 1109 01:14:12,520 --> 01:14:16,640 used to call themselves and it was accepted as dogma by many in 1110 01:14:16,640 --> 01:14:20,640 mainstream Western opinion. It's a country of the rule of 1111 01:14:20,640 --> 01:14:22,680 law despite the occupation, etcetera. 1112 01:14:23,360 --> 01:14:26,880 And it's the only democracy of the in the Middle East despite 1113 01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:29,280 ruling millions of persons who have no right to vote. 1114 01:14:30,080 --> 01:14:34,080 So now these are the extremist position, These are the 1115 01:14:34,360 --> 01:14:37,160 fictional positions that are not really accepted and can't be 1116 01:14:37,160 --> 01:14:42,280 accepted because they don't stand or they don't withstand 1117 01:14:42,520 --> 01:14:45,360 the test of reality, the test of facts and documentation. 1118 01:14:46,120 --> 01:14:50,040 So the IC, the ICJ and the genocide rule, provisional 1119 01:14:50,040 --> 01:14:53,560 measures rulings, the ICJ and the legality illegal occupation 1120 01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:57,960 ruling, the ICC are important in solidifying a political 1121 01:14:57,960 --> 01:15:00,840 discourse. So we understand the effect of 1122 01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:04,520 law not only legally and in terms of short term 1123 01:15:04,520 --> 01:15:07,600 accountability. There may, may never be 1124 01:15:07,600 --> 01:15:11,640 accountability for individual criminals. 1125 01:15:12,040 --> 01:15:16,160 We have seen some of that in the cases of in Bosnia, for example, 1126 01:15:16,160 --> 01:15:19,880 Bosnian genocide. But at least at this point in 1127 01:15:19,880 --> 01:15:23,360 which you want to advance the discourse of liberation, 1128 01:15:23,360 --> 01:15:27,560 discourse of self determination for the Palestinians in their 1129 01:15:27,560 --> 01:15:31,600 own homeland, this legal discourse open opens up the 1130 01:15:31,600 --> 01:15:34,640 spaces in which we did not have before. 1131 01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:40,760 So many people reacted as if these are, you know, kind of 1132 01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:42,840 mundane rulings. So what they would say after the 1133 01:15:42,840 --> 01:15:49,320 ICJ delivered an 80 page condemnation in July 2024 of 1134 01:15:49,440 --> 01:15:56,960 what is the legal structure that Israel created since 1967 and 1135 01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:00,400 how in a very comprehensive manner, you know, demolitions, 1136 01:16:01,720 --> 01:16:07,120 settlers attacks, the confiscation of lands, the 1137 01:16:07,120 --> 01:16:10,280 situation in Jerusalem, the zoning and planning, planning, 1138 01:16:10,560 --> 01:16:13,920 etcetera. In order to show how that 1139 01:16:13,920 --> 01:16:18,120 system, you know, became a system of subjugation, 1140 01:16:18,440 --> 01:16:23,640 discrimination and colonization and that it is inherently 1141 01:16:23,920 --> 01:16:27,720 unlawful as far as international law is concerned. 1142 01:16:28,520 --> 01:16:31,280 You can say that this is well, they are saying what we all 1143 01:16:31,280 --> 01:16:34,560 know. Yes, I and Hal and Janine know, 1144 01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:40,000 but we are engaged in these arguments in public arena, in 1145 01:16:40,120 --> 01:16:43,920 political debates in Western societies that many of which are 1146 01:16:43,920 --> 01:16:48,800 hostile to us. So they are a vindication. 1147 01:16:49,480 --> 01:16:52,480 They open up spaces in this sense. 1148 01:16:52,680 --> 01:16:56,280 Now, in terms of the international kind of order more 1149 01:16:56,280 --> 01:17:01,160 generally, obviously it's the moment in which we cannot 1150 01:17:01,160 --> 01:17:03,520 anticipate what will happen next. 1151 01:17:04,000 --> 01:17:09,160 But one hopes that from the destruction of what exists, 1152 01:17:09,360 --> 01:17:13,800 something better will emerge. And it is our function, as, you 1153 01:17:13,800 --> 01:17:17,600 know, activists, as educators, as human rights defenders, as, 1154 01:17:17,600 --> 01:17:21,680 you know, politicians is to try to advance the system. 1155 01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:25,760 So what will replace it will be much better than it was. 1156 01:17:27,200 --> 01:17:29,560 And even, you know, protecting the minimal structure that 1157 01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:32,800 exists now, you know, is, is very important. 1158 01:17:32,800 --> 01:17:38,560 But we as Palestinians know more than anyone that the idea of 1159 01:17:39,200 --> 01:17:44,800 enforcing the rule, you know, the international law is not 1160 01:17:44,800 --> 01:17:47,840 sufficient in the sense that international law itself was 1161 01:17:47,840 --> 01:17:52,040 complicit in our colonization and the ethnic cleansing of the 1162 01:17:52,040 --> 01:17:58,960 Palestinians, you know. So 181, General Assembly 1163 01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:05,120 Resolution 181, the UN Security Council resolution 242 are two 1164 01:18:05,120 --> 01:18:08,320 major rulings on which the so-called 2 state solution 1165 01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:12,040 paradigm and also process are premised. 1166 01:18:12,440 --> 01:18:14,680 And both of them are fundamentally unjust. 1167 01:18:14,880 --> 01:18:18,840 And both of them were opposed by Arab States and the Palestinians 1168 01:18:19,480 --> 01:18:23,960 at the at the time. So the idea is, you know, we 1169 01:18:23,960 --> 01:18:26,560 might see more injustices in the future because there are 1170 01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:28,840 limitations of the ICC and the ICJ. 1171 01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:34,480 The Bosnians were betrayed by the ICJ twice in the past and 1172 01:18:34,480 --> 01:18:37,120 were disillusioned from it. So it remains to be seen what 1173 01:18:37,120 --> 01:18:41,520 will happen in this legal fora. And it is our job, as you know, 1174 01:18:41,520 --> 01:18:45,160 legal scholars, as activists, as educators, as people engaged in 1175 01:18:45,160 --> 01:18:49,200 public, public discussions, is to try to educate against 1176 01:18:49,200 --> 01:18:54,000 genocide denial, to try to pursue the cause of 1177 01:18:54,240 --> 01:18:58,560 accountability, to document, document the genocide, to defend 1178 01:18:58,640 --> 01:19:02,840 human rights defenders who are working for all these things in 1179 01:19:02,840 --> 01:19:06,480 order not to allow the system of impunity that was constructed 1180 01:19:07,120 --> 01:19:12,560 for so long to continue unabated as if a genocide did not happen. 1181 01:19:13,400 --> 01:19:17,440 Yeah, I think that call to Action is a really good place 1182 01:19:17,440 --> 01:19:20,320 for us to to wrap up this episode. 1183 01:19:20,320 --> 01:19:26,280 And also the, you know, what you were saying about what our role 1184 01:19:26,280 --> 01:19:30,480 is in terms of raising awareness and, you know, not allowing the 1185 01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:33,880 impunity that we're currently witnessing to continue on 1186 01:19:33,880 --> 01:19:37,480 question and unchallenged is actually why the Palestinian 1187 01:19:37,480 --> 01:19:40,560 youth movement, who Nihal and I both organized with, launched a 1188 01:19:40,560 --> 01:19:45,240 campaign a few months ago around Palestinian political prisoners 1189 01:19:45,680 --> 01:19:48,320 with the knowledge that there's almost like a second genocide 1190 01:19:48,640 --> 01:19:50,320 that is currently happening behind bars. 1191 01:19:50,320 --> 01:19:53,840 And it's, it's our role also, as you know, Palestinians and Arabs 1192 01:19:53,840 --> 01:19:57,920 and people of conscience in the West and, and, and around the 1193 01:19:57,920 --> 01:20:00,720 world to, to not only raise awareness of that, but also 1194 01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:05,480 insist on some key demand. Simple things like, you know, 1195 01:20:06,680 --> 01:20:10,960 the Israeli regime releasing the names of the 11,000 presidents. 1196 01:20:10,960 --> 01:20:14,600 We don't even have the list of names and allowing access for 1197 01:20:14,600 --> 01:20:16,840 human rights organizations to to enter. 1198 01:20:18,320 --> 01:20:20,960 The prisons. So I think it's a really 1199 01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:26,400 positive, sobering grounding note for us to to end on. 1200 01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:29,800 So thank you very much for joining us. 1201 01:20:29,800 --> 01:20:33,240 We really appreciate your time and your expertise. 1202 01:20:33,240 --> 01:20:36,720 And this was a really informative and illuminating 1203 01:20:36,720 --> 01:20:37,920 episode. So thank you. 1204 01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:39,720 Thank you both. Thank you.